Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff, Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones. To a lesser degree, Mac Jones. There can be value in bringing in quarterbacks the rest of the league has given up on.
Mayfield and Goff might both throw 40-plus touchdowns. Danny Dimes and Darnold have their teams winning. And even Mac Jones has passed for at least 279 yards in all four of his starts.
All such players at some point in their careers have been on the scrapheap – available to any team that wanted them. And all at some point have bounced back to dramatically outperform their contracts.
It’s a trend that seems to be happening more now than it has in the past. I think it ensures that we’ll see second and third chances handed out to first-round quarterbacks who don’t work out with their initial teams.
In the past 10 years, I see eight quarterbacks finishing with above-average numbers after their initial team gave up on them. Those eight guys put together 14 such seasons.
Note: Here, I use per-game numbers. I consider them to be more meaningful than cumulative stats. Almost all quarterbacks starting 16-plus games will finish with above-average total numbers, but what we tend to look for (in most fantasy leagues) is instead a player who’s productive when he’s in there. The chart below shows per-game stats using traditional scoring, with quarterbacks measured against others who started at least half the season.
There were four such quarterbacks last year, and we’ve got another big group coming down the pipe this season.
| CASTOFF QUARTERBACKS AVERAGING TOP-15 NUMBERS | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | G | Pass | TDP | Run | TDR | Pts | Rk |
| 2015 | Ryan Fitzpatrick, NYJ | 16 | 244.1 | 1.94 | 16.9 | .13 | 22.4 | 15 |
| 2017 | Josh McCown, NYJ | 13 | 225.1 | 1.38 | 9.5 | .38 | 20.1 | 14 |
| 2017 | Alex Smith, K.C. | 15 | 269.5 | 1.73 | 23.7 | .07 | 23.2 | 3 |
| 2019 | Ryan Fitzpatrick, Mia. | 13 | 259.1 | 1.46 | 18.3 | .31 | 22.6 | 12 |
| 2019 | Ryan Tannehill, Ten. | 10 | 259.8 | 2.20 | 18.1 | .40 | 26.2 | 3 |
| 2020 | Ryan Tannehill, Ten. | 16 | 238.7 | 2.06 | 16.6 | .44 | 24.8 | 10 |
| 2021 | Ryan Tannehill, Ten. | 17 | 219.6 | 1.24 | 15.9 | .41 | 20.0 | 15 |
| 2022 | Geno Smith, Sea. | 17 | 251.9 | 1.76 | 21.5 | .06 | 22.2 | 7 |
| 2022 | Jared Goff, Det. | 17 | 261.1 | 1.71 | 4.3 | .00 | 20.5 | 15 |
| 2023 | Jared Goff, Det. | 17 | 269.1 | 1.76 | 1.2 | .12 | 21.6 | 10 |
| 2024 | Baker Mayfield, T.B. | 17 | 264.7 | 2.41 | 22.2 | .18 | 26.3 | 3 |
| 2024 | Geno Smith, Sea. | 17 | 254.1 | 1.24 | 16.0 | .12 | 20.0 | 14 |
| 2024 | Jared Goff, Det. | 17 | 272.3 | 2.18 | 3.3 | .06 | 23.1 | 7 |
| 2024 | Sam Darnold, Min. | 17 | 254.1 | 2.06 | 12.5 | .06 | 22.5 | 8 |
—Ian Allan